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Belgium’s VIPs

Now that you know where to find Belgium on the map let me introduce you to the VIP’s in charge of this little country.

First of all meet our King Philip.

Philip is his name in English. But in French it is Philippe, in Dutch you should write Filip, and in German it becomes Philipp.

If you think this is of no importance. Think something else. This is a serious matter here in Belgium.

I will tell you more about that later.

So as I said Philip is the King of the Belgians and that since 21 July 2013.

He is married to Mathilde our actual Queen:

In addition to our actual official King and Queen we have an other King and Queen: Albert and Paola.

Albert abdicated a few years ago but kept his title of King and his wife is still a Queen.

So today, Belgium has two Kings and two Queens.

Keep reading to understand why I am telling you all this.

Next to our Kings and Queens we have lots of Ministers, Secretaries of State and Governments.

As I said in my previous post, Belgium counts 6 governments:

The Federal Government with 15 ministers

The Flemish Government with 9 ministers

The French Community with 7 ministers

The German speaking Community with 4 ministers

The Walloon Region with 8 ministers

The Government of Brussels Capital with 5 ministers

I didn’t mention the Secretaries of State. I am just trying to keep it very simple for you to understand. I don’t want to confuse you.

All those Kings, Queens, Ministers, Secretary of State represent the citizens of Belgium. They provide protection to the citizens or should I say “the taxpayers”.

In order to get protection from those VIP’s, people pay taxes.

And as you can see, we have a lot of “body guards” who take care of us so of course we have a lot of taxes to pay.That is the reason why the main task of all our Ministers and Secretary of State is to collect taxes:

income taxes,

social security taxes,

corporate taxes,

value added taxes,

property taxes,

regional taxes,

local taxes

and other various fees invented every day.

Now I guess you understand why Belgium has the highest income taxes in the developed world.

The average Belgian worker gives 42% of his salary back to the government.

And here in this little country nobody works for free. Not even our ex King.He is angry and complained about his salary.He says he isn’t able to live on the $1.1million a year het gets from the citizens. It isn’t enough to pay the fuel of his yacht.

I think it is time for us Belgian people to feel sorry for him and to help him.

I think I am going to raise some money to help the pore guy. I thinking about collecting stuff we do not need any more: old furniture, clothes, vegetables out of our garden… just to help him through the month.Wouldn’t that be nice??????